Featured Productions
Beauty & The Beast
Client: Harrisburg Academy -- Wormleysburg PA
Role: Lighting Designer, Electrician, Live Technical Director, FOH Audio Engineer
Run Dates: 3/4/24 - 3/6/24: 3 Evenings, 2 Matinees
Personal Summary:
This was my first show good enough to be paid for. It was my final production with Harrisburg Academy, and after watching back my prior year's design, I studied online, at traveling shows, and with Thomas Hudson extremely hard. The prior production -- Little Shop of Horrors -- had invisible actors, sporatic, incoherent effects, miniscule organization, terrible timing, and downright disabling fixture placements.
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For this show I acquired a GrandMA2 console, and read the manual. I learned the absolute importance of data management, and developed my systems to create a professional performance. I learned to mark a script with cues, not ramblings, make digital plots, and sourced the fixtures neccesary for visibility and depth.
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I studied color theory with the Academy's art teacher, and consulted our physics teacher on the properties of light. I learned to create custom prop fixtures with our resident IT head / EE.
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I learned to efficiently deal data in MA with mark cues, block cues, @ commands, storing options, copy and move commands, and macros. I learned to setup a showfile for easy operation, and safe control of pyrotechnics. This was an actual cued show, not busked like my other musicals.
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Perhaps most importantly, I created a schedule for myself to complete a full program before tech week, where I consulted with both my directors and a local theatre administrator on my design. Below you may find the evidence of my best show yet, with my same equipment limitations and complete self-direction.
Frozen Kids
Client: Harrisburg Academy -- Wormleysburg PA
Role: Lighting Designer, Electrician, Live Technical Director, FOH Audio Engineer
Run Dates: 5/4/23 - 5/6/23: 2 Evenings, 1 Matinee
Personal Summary:
For this show, with limited fixtures, rigging positions, and on Hog4PC, I was asked to complement the client's dim projections in substitution of a set. After rewatching Frozen the movie, I decided to place four "blinder" static washes on our upstage left/right scaffolds, and four on the stage edge. I kept the client's two beams center on the downstage pipe, along with two moving washes on its right and left. I placed four static front washes (two for upstage, two for downstage) on the client's single house electric, a scraping pair on chains, and two on a new upstage pipe. This show taught me small-scale rigging and efficient focusing, in order to avoid washing out the client's projections.
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Much of my design focused on compensating for the minimal set and dim projections; I used my blinders at all times to focus the audience centerstage when viewing the background, and the downstage beams and washes to texture the floor. The stage edge moving washes allowed creepy moments for the shows villains, and my "blinders" framing the stage allowed Elsa to shoot her powers anywhere, even encompassing the stage to "trap" characters as neccesary. My floor-placed moving washes were used as extra "dancers" to expand the limited ensemble.
School of Rock!
Client: Harrisburg Academy -- Wormleysburg PA
Role: Lighting Designer, Electrician, Live Technical Director, FOH Audio Engineer
Run Dates: 3/4/22 - 3/6/22: 3 Evenings, 2 Matinees
Personal Summary:
This was my first production, which while I taught myself to produce, luckily the clients mainly conventional rig and the busking style of ETC’s Hog4 tutorials were perfect for School of Rock. I established locations and visibility with the conventionals, and hung three moving washes on a 6-foot truss in the house just outside stage-right, with two geysers under the stage edge. I placed two static washes to scrape the stage, and pairs of beam and moving wash fixtures straddling a downstage pipe's center. The client added a pan-only disco light center downstage, and I added one extra static wash in the house on stage-left, to balance the stage-left truss.
As the show takes heavy inspiration from AC/DC’s "High Voltage" tour , I built an executor page of base cues and effects cuelists similar to what I found in old AC/DC film. I established locations and visibility with conventionals, and saved our dj lights almost entirely for effects. I taught my operator to busk with these cuelists and midi modifier faders, from a spreadsheet of scene-by-scene guidelines. I made sure to save our geysers for the acts' ends, to keep the audience surprised. I made fx cuelists in three categories: color and intensity chases on the scrapes, different speed rotations for the pan-only beam, and different mover fx using rotating [or] open color. Finally, I made a full-rig +20% relative intensity bump button for drum hits, and a full-rig red bump for dramatic character confrontations.
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This show contained my most rapid personal growth of my life so far. I taught myself design and electrician practices completely from the internet, with no directions or suggestions whatsoever from the show director. The client's fixture inventory at the time was a small, incorrectly wired conventional system, and about 30 dj lights, a third of which I needed to repair with my school's IT head (an EE in a prior life). Out of neccesity, I became an experienced mixer -- the client's other candidates for FOH were to be in the pit or onstage, so I was assigned to mix 15 channels on an A&H analog console. For lighting, I taught a middle school student to operate, whom I called pointers and cues to whilst mixing. As leaders in production area across our board dropped out of the show, I forced myself to step up and learn what they didn't. I'm glad I did.
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Other Design Experience
Little Shop of Horrors, 2023, Harrisburg Academy
Willy Wonka Jr, 2024, Harrisburg Academy
Rainbow Fish, 2024, Gretna Theatre
Non-Design Experience
Matriculation Ceremony
at Harrisburg Academy
Spencer + Julia Fecho
Wedding at Mickey's Black Box
School of Rock Production
at Genesius Theatre
Since July of 2024, I have been working diligently with IATSE 501 at Rock Lititz, and IATSE 98 in Central Pennsylvania. In these unions, I have had the privilege to both prepare and load in/out productions such as Peso Pluma's "Exodo" Tour, and Justin Timerblake's "Forget Tomorrow Tour". Especially at Lititz, I have been working with cutting-edge equipment and the most senior members of my industry.
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In whatever I do, I take the attitude to never stand still -- I am always helping, always learning, always trying to advance the show's efficiency, and ability. I have worked for two years with Thomas Hudson of regional Scary Good Productions -- as an intern and now lighting technician. I have worked as a followspot operator and carpenter at Mount Gretna Theatre, and am currently programming for Carlisle Performing Arts Center.
At Harrisburg Academy, I acted for years in its stagecraft class as a lead carpenter and fabricator. I designed, routed and repaired their audio systems, and liasoned with hosted productions. And in my spare time -- since middle school -- I practice development, systems administration, networking, penetration testing, video editing, and projection design.
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